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Re: Life creates order
Life’s ability to sustain itself and temporarily hold impermanence at bay is far more interesting than order vs chaos, in my mind.
Jeroen
Re: Life creates order
Without entropy seeds would have to painstakingly placed where they are to sprout rather than just distribute far and wide by wind or by other entropic process.
Jeffrey
Re: Life creates order
Brief: Indeed, life creates order for life is orderly chaos.
One might say that life is chaos channeled so as to appear orderly.
Life is what makes sense and purpose of the chaos.
Embrace the chaos, it is a function of life as life is a function of chaos.
Beautiful either way.
Peace to all
Lionduck
Re: Life creates order
@David said:
I think chaos is order misunderstood as all things have a cause.
The order of physics and geological processes is not order on a more macro scale. Life replicates itself, it creates structures like a beehive or a birds nest. It creates more of itself, a few penguins will create a colony of penguins who huddle together against the cold.
Jeroen
Re: Life creates order
@David said:
Does life create order or does order create life?
I suppose both at some level. I would phrase it as order creates and sustains life and life creates and maintains order.
I think chaos is order misunderstood as all things have a cause.
I think we're talking about degrees here. The level of order and chaos matters.
person
Re: Words cannot encapsulate reality
I kind of think of it like using an ice cube to describe water. Reality flows, whereas language and really even thoughts and emotions, freeze reality into something discrete and isolated.
person
Re: Life creates order
@Jeroen said:
You may have heard that impermanence creates suffering. That because of the nature of continuous change, we find that that which we wish for is taken away from us, and that which we wish not to have is given to us.
I don't think impermanence makes us suffer. Our wanting things to be different makes us suffer. Impermanence is what gives us life and the possibility of awakening.
But what also happens is life creates order, and things fitting together, and life also maintains organisms. So in a way life keeps suffering at bay, until it becomes old and can no longer fulfil its function.
Does life create order or does order create life?
David
Re: Life creates order
Order often gets a bad rap because of the harmful ways it can express itself socially. But order is also taking the randomness of nature and turning it into food crops that feed us. Or harnessing the wind for a sail or electric power.
Most of the universe moves in ways that don't promote life. But in the extremely rare set of conditions where life has arisen life itself has the ability to maintain and sustain itself.
person
Re: Words cannot encapsulate reality
Against a background of chaos, a temporary compilation of skandhas, as ethereal a structure as the karmic momentum that instigated it, try to connect with other skandhic compilations .......through words.
As near or as far from reality, as a finger is from the moon that its trying to point at.
how
Words cannot encapsulate reality
I was listening to a short meditative reflection by John Astin about language on the Waking Up app, and it made me realise that words are just a model of reality. You say tree, but in fact the word tree falls far short of the reality of a tree. It doesn’t tell you if it is tall or short, young or old, blossoming or in leaf. The word cannot encapsulate the reality of the tree, which always has more detail to be examined.
Also, what you see in your mind when you read or hear spoken language is a collection of impressions from the past. You may have a specific idea of a tree, tall, deciduous and healthy and in full leaf. But the author whose word tree you just read may have had a very different image and idea of a tree; it may have involved palm leaves and coconuts. So your impression of a read passage of words is pretty unique, based on the past encounters you have had.
Poetry deserves a special mention, because poetry is like an impressionist painting made out of words. It forms an image in your mind which is only loosely related to the actual words used.
Jeroen